The headlines have died down, but there is still a lot of commotion behind the scenes on who and how listings will be distributed to the public.
The Big Three became the Big Two when Zillow merged with Trulia, and Realtor.com was sold to News Corp. Recently the revamped Realtor.com is being advertised heavily in the Wall Street Journal, a sister company, and they embarked on an advertising campaign that points out that Zillow doesn’t have all the listings (BTW, Zillow has more – they have FSBOs).
Meanwhile, a group of brokers started building their own nationwide MLS, and NAR threw them $12 million to develop further:
http://www.inman.com/2015/05/16/nar-approves-up-to-12m-in-funding-for-rpr-upstream-project/
Zillow isn’t one to stand around, and last week they rolled out their new campaign to assist the Premier Agents with lead follow-up. They call it Zillow Concierge – here is the first half of the email they sent:
We will begin calling your contacts, saving you time and money, starting TODAY, May 19th 2015
You’ve been selected to participate in a pilot where a team at Zillow will not only call your leads immediately (within about 10 minutes) but follow up diligently afterward (by phone, email and text message) for the first 30 days (or until we reach them).
The goal of this pilot is to increase your conversion from initial contact to appointment. In your busy day, little time is left for the ongoing follow up required to maximize your return on your Zillow investment. We’ll be using a rigorous follow up schedule to engage each of your contacts up to 20 times in the first 30 days by email, text and, of course, phone.
I wonder where this is going. Zillow already imposes their own phone numbers and email addresses on my Zillow page so they can control the flow. How long will it be before they start directing the incoming leads to the highest bidder?
“How long will it be before they start directing the incoming leads to the highest bidder?”
Ages ago, when Yellow Pages(tm) was still relevant, I remember receiving this bit of advice: advertising in YP is worthwhile only if you can afford the largest display ad for your category. The top 1 or 2 advertisers (e.g. the largest display ads) in each category received nearly all the leads. The medium changes, but the principles remain the same?